A Strategic Plan Is Just a Promise Until It Changes What People Do on Tuesday.
Uncorking leadership, learning, and the conversations that move schools forward.
Last week, I asked you to stop adding things.
Close the Google Doc.
Back away from the tracker.
Protect your teachers from your enthusiasm.
Hopefully, some of you actually listened.
Which means you now have fewer priorities.
Congratulations.
Now comes the annoying part.
You have to make them happen.
Because choosing the right priorities and successfully executing them are two entirely different leadership skills.
And this is where many perfectly reasonable strategic plans go to die.
Not dramatically.
Nobody announces:
“We’ve decided to abandon the strategic plan.”
Instead, everyone keeps talking about it.
The slides still exist.
The goals are still on the website.
Someone references them at a board meeting.
There’s probably a beautiful one-pager.
But meanwhile…
Tuesday happens.
And Tuesday has questions.
Tuesday Does Not Care About Your Strategic Plan
Let’s say your strategic plan says:
Improve Tier I instruction.
Excellent.
Tuesday would like some additional information.
What exactly should teachers do differently?
What should coaches look for?
What should principals monitor?
What should regional leaders pay attention to?
What student evidence should change?
Where will we look at that evidence?
How often?
Who decides what happens if it isn’t improving? What triggers them to decide?
And perhaps most importantly:
What will we stop talking about so people have enough attention to actually do this?
Because Improve Tier I instruction is not yet a strategy.
It’s an aspiration.
A strategy starts becoming real when people know what they are supposed to do.
Coherence Is the Work
This is where I’ve become increasingly obsessed with coherence.
Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn describe coherence as the shared depth of understanding about the purpose and nature of the work, built through focused direction, collaborative cultures, deepening learning, and securing accountability.
That matters.
Because coherence isn’t:
Everybody received the same PowerPoint.
It isn’t:
We put the priority on everyone’s goals.
And it definitely isn’t:
We said it at August PD, so people know.
Coherence means people at different levels of an organization understand how their particular work connects to the same outcome.
That distinction is important.
The Regional Academic Leader should not be doing the principal’s job.
The principal should not be doing the coach’s job.
The coach should not be doing the teacher’s job.
But their work should connect.
That’s coherence.
TNTP’s work on The Opportunity Myth makes the student-level consequence of this especially important. Students need consistent access to four key resources: grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers who hold high expectations.
Those aren’t things a strategic plan can deliver by itself.
Adults have to create those experiences.
Which means somewhere between:
“We believe all students deserve grade-level instruction”
and
a student sitting in a classroom on Tuesday
there has to be a chain of adult actions.
That’s the part we sometimes skip.
Strategy Has to Travel
An idea can sound crystal clear in the room where it was created.
The regional team says:
We need stronger writing.
Everyone nods.
The principal hears:
“Writing is a priority.”
The coach hears:
“I should coach writing.”
The teacher hears:
“Apparently we’re doing more writing.”
And the student hears:
“Take out a sheet of paper.”
We have technically communicated the same priority.
We have not created a coherent strategy.
Strategy has to survive several handoffs.
Regional Leader → Principal → Coach → Teacher → Student
At every handoff, there is an opportunity for the strategy to get fuzzier.
Like the world’s least fun game of Telephone.
Except instead of ending with everyone laughing because “purple monkey dishwasher” came out the other end…
We end with a child receiving six months of inconsistent instruction.
Not funny.
Build the Waterfall
We’ve started using what we call a Cascade Plan.
You could also think of it as a waterfall plan.
The idea is simple:
If we have identified a student outcome we want to change over the next cycle, we work backward.
What will the teacher do?
Then:
What will the coach do that increases the likelihood the teacher does that well?
Then:
What will the principal do to develop and monitor the coach?
Then:
What will the regional leader do to support and hold the principal accountable for that work?
Same student problem.
Different adult actions.
Our actual Cascade Plan lays those levels next to one another:
Regional/District/Charter Operator Leader will…
Principal will…
Coach will…
Teacher will…
And then comes the part I really like.
For each level, we don’t just name the action.
We ask how we’ll verify the input and how we’ll verify the student outcome.
Then at the bottom:
Adjust.
That’s the waterfall.
Not:
Regional/District says something.
Principal repeats it.
Coach puts it on an agenda.
Teacher gets another thing to do.
That’s delegation.
A real cascade asks:
What does each level of the organization need to do so that the next level can be more effective?
And ultimately:
Did any of it make a difference for students?
Coherence Is Not Sameness
This is worth slowing down for.
Sometimes organizations confuse coherence with compliance.
“Everybody should be doing the same thing.”
Not necessarily.
Everybody should understand the same problem.
Everybody should understand the same intended student outcome.
Everybody should understand how their work contributes to it.
But the actions should be role-specific.
If first graders who began the year Well Below or Below Benchmark need more opportunities to segment and blend words, the teacher’s action might involve increasing meaningful daily practice.
The coach’s action isn’t:
Also segment and blend words.
The coach might observe, give feedback, plan with the teacher, or analyze student responses.
The principal might monitor whether coaching is changing teacher practice and help the coach determine what to do next.
The regional leader might examine patterns across classrooms and develop the principal’s ability to respond.
Different work.
Same students. Same problem. Same outcome.
That’s coherence.
Turn Nouns Into Verbs
Strategic plans love nouns.
Rigor.
Culture.
Belonging.
Acceleration.
Engagement.
Writing.
Equity.
Beautiful words.
Terrible instructions.
You cannot implement a noun.
So ask:
What does this priority require people to DO?
If the priority is writing:
What will students write?
How often?
What will teachers look for?
What feedback will they give?
What will coaches examine?
What will principals monitor?
What evidence will tell us students are improving?
If the priority is attendance:
Who notices an absence?
Who calls?
When?
What happens next?
What does the principal examine?
What pattern does the regional team need to see?
Turn the noun into verbs.
Then assign those verbs to people.
That’s where implementation begins.
The Meeting Might Actually Be the Strategy
I know.
One blog after telling you to eliminate unnecessary meetings, I’m about to defend meetings.
Stay with me. I am a complicated person who means all the things I say.
Meetings aren’t inherently bad.
Meetings without decisions are bad.
If something is truly an organizational priority, there should be a predictable place where people examine whether it is working.
Not admire the data.
Not describe the data.
Not spend 38 minutes saying:
“That’s interesting.”
Make a decision.
This is why our cascade isn’t meant to be a static planning document.
It lives inside a cycle.
Align.
What student outcome are we trying to change?
Act.
What will each level do?
Verify.
Did the adults do what we said they would do?
And more importantly:
Did students respond?
Adjust.
What happens next?
That’s the meeting. That’s the strategy. That’s the learning. FYI, my team and I are continuously working to improve on our decisive action.
Monitoring Is Still Not an Action
I am apparently going to say this until retirement:
Monitoring isn’t an action.
Education loves:
“We’re monitoring it.”
Great.
What are you doing?
Monitoring tells you whether something happened.
It does not cause something to happen.
Attendance is down.
“We’re monitoring attendance.”
Students aren’t mastering the skill.
“We’re monitoring the data.”
Teacher practice isn’t changing.
“Leadership is monitoring classrooms.”
Okay.
Then what?
This is why a cascade needs both an adult input and a student outcome.
Otherwise we can accidentally celebrate implementation without knowing whether it worked. (Welcome to my life lesson in SY 24-25).
Teacher completed the action.
Check.
Coach observed.
Check.
Principal reviewed the data.
Check.
Regional leader followed up.
Check.
Beautiful cascade.
Students still didn’t learn it.
Not done.
The purpose of the adult action is the student outcome.
Beware the Implementation Theater
Implementation theater is when an organization produces all the artifacts associated with doing something without necessarily doing the thing.
There’s a tracker.
There’s a rubric.
There’s a meeting.
There’s a slide deck, a walkthrough form, a professional development session, a shared drive folder.
There’s even a laminated poster.
We. Are. READY.
Except…
student experience hasn’t changed.
Artifacts can support implementation. They are not implementation.
Think about the classroom readiness checklists of yesteryear.
The slogans are up. Posters are posted. The board configuration is flawless. Objectives are printed in the approved font size. Pencils are sharpened. Bins are labeled.
Room Readiness Score: 100%.
Then the students arrive.
By 10:17 a.m., the classroom is metaphorically ablaze.
But don’t worry. Somewhere, a leadership team is sending a celebratory email:
90% of classrooms met our room-readiness expectations! 🎉
Meanwhile, teachers are running toward the flames with buckets of water.
We measured whether the conditions looked ready, not whether those conditions actually produced the experience we intended.
That’s implementation theater.
And before I get too smug about classroom-readiness checklists, leaders do this too.
A beautifully completed Cascade Plan can become implementation theater.
I say this as someone who loves a good tool. Give me a spreadsheet with dropdown menus, conditional formatting, and a few strategically placed checkboxes and I am genuinely delighted.
But the Cascade Plan is only useful if it helps us answer:
Did our adult actions produce the student response we expected?
If not, the answer cannot be:
“But everyone completed their boxes.”
Wonderful.
The Google Sheet is thriving.
How are the kids?
Because the goal was never a completed tracker.
The goal was never a perfect walkthrough score.
The goal was never fidelity for fidelity’s sake.
The artifact is evidence that we organized the work. Student outcomes are evidence that the work worked.
And when those two things disagree, believe the students.
Follow the Water All the Way Down
Here’s the test. Pick one priority. Start at the top.
Regional leader takes an action.
And then what?
Principal practice changes.
And then what?
Coach practice changes.
And then what?
Teacher practice changes.
And then what?
Student experience changes.
And then what?
Student learning changes.
Good.
Now do something even more useful.
Follow the waterfall back up.
Student outcomes didn’t change.
Why?
Did students receive enough practice?
If not, why?
Did teacher practice change?
If not, did coaching change it?
If not, what did the principal do?
What support did the principal receive?
Where did the cascade break?
Now we’re learning.
That’s a very different conversation from:
“Did everyone do their action step?”
Your Strategy Should Fit on a Tuesday
This might be my favorite test for strategic clarity.
If I walk into your organization on a random Tuesday, can I see the strategy?
Can I hear it in the principal’s conversation with the coach?
Can I hear it in the coach’s conversation with the teacher?
Can I see it in the opportunities students receive?
Can people at every level tell me:
Here’s the outcome we’re trying to change.
Here’s my part.
Here’s how I’ll know whether my part happened.
Here’s how we’ll know whether it worked for students.
That’s coherence.
The strategic plan is the promise.
The cascade is how the promise travels.
Final Sip
Blog #9 was about protecting your organization from too many priorities.
Because everything cannot be the priority.
But fewer priorities alone don’t create coherence.
You have to connect the work.
Student outcome.
↑
Teacher action.
↑
Coach action.
↑
Principal action.
↑
Regional action.
And then follow the evidence back down.
Did it happen?
Did it work?
What do we adjust?
That’s the waterfall.
So here’s this week’s Edutipsy challenge:
Take one priority from your strategic plan.
Don’t make another slide about it.
Instead, ask:
What does this require from each level of our organization?
Then ask the question that matters most:
If every adult does their part, what should be different for students in 10 days?
If you can’t draw the line from the strategy to the student…
you don’t have a cascade yet.
You have a collection of good intentions.
Take another sip.
Then build the waterfall.
Sip Wisdom: Recommended Reading
Michael Fullan & Joanne Quinn — Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems.
Fullan and Quinn’s concept of coherence is useful because it moves beyond simple alignment. Sustainable improvement requires shared understanding of the work, focused direction, collaborative cultures, deep learning, and accountability that reinforces the system rather than fragmenting it.
TNTP — The Opportunity Myth.
TNTP found that students—particularly students who had historically been underserved—too often spent significant time on work below grade level despite successfully completing their assignments. Their framework around grade-appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and high expectations is a powerful reminder that organizational strategy ultimately has to change what students experience.
Anthony S. Bryk, Louis M. Gomez, Alicia Grunow & Paul G. LeMahieu — Learning to Improve.
Improvement science strengthens the other half of the cascade: don’t simply implement a plan and assume it works. Test changes, study evidence, learn quickly, and adjust.
Paul Bambrick-Santoyo — Leverage Leadership 2.0.
The leverage idea is particularly relevant to a waterfall model. Leaders increase impact not by personally doing every action, but by developing and monitoring the people whose work is closest to the next level of execution.
One More Sip
At your next leadership meeting, don’t ask:
“Did we communicate the priority?”
Ask: “Can we trace it?”
Regional leader.
Principal.
Coach.
Teacher.
Student.
Then reverse it.
Student.
Teacher.
Coach.
Principal.
Regional leader.
If the line breaks anywhere, that’s where the leadership work is.